Saturday, September 30, 2006

One of the things that I never realized about Manhattan is that there are literally a bunch of old-style water-towers all over the place. I don't know why they're there, but they definately give a place with character a good dollop more. :) Click to enlarge.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Lanette & I went to the local pet cemetary yesterday. It's probably not a place I'd have ever have thought of going to, let alone photograph, but it turned out to be a pretty fun idea. Except, of course, for the giant freakin' spiderweb I walked face-first into as we were headed back to my car. Luckily, the huugggge (okay, it was only an inch long) spider didn't end up on me.

Not sure what this was doing there -- can dogs really be Catholic?

Snoodles! Props to this good boy's master for coming up with an awesome name. :)

LUCIFIER?! Who names their dog that? Unless, of course, the dog was a very bad, a very very bad boy.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Sunday, September 24, 2006

The funniest part about this photo is that everyone seems to be more interested in the handbags on sale in the background than in the Naked Cowboy, who is, as you can see, very excited about himself. Click to enlarge.

Monday, September 18, 2006

These flags were at the WTC site in NYC this August. I believe they were pulled out of the rubble. People were invited over the years to write their thoughts on the flag -- I've tried to zoom in and capture some of the the text. As you can see, tragedies bring out all sorts of emotions in people... and you can kind of see why evil is so self-perpetuating. Click to enlarge.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

We started out in Kearney and headed west on I-80 to try to intersect with a cell that was sliding northeast past the interstate. We ended up doing a U-turn in one of the cop turnouts and stopping at a rest area, as the next exit required driving under the meso and getting on the wrong side of the storm. It wasn't very exciting, structure-wise and was pretty high-based, but it did have an interesting lowering that formed very quickly. This is the storm that ended up going tornado warned after it slid north of Kearney.

(Pulled over on the interstate)

(At the rest-stop)

We then zipped over to Minden, with the thought of catching the cell behind the cell we met on the Interstate. This turned out to be a rather amusingly wrong idea, as that cell was well north of I-80 before we even got to Minden -- they were racing northeast at 45mph, which made it hard to keep up with, given the lack of northeast roads. ;) Minden is where we ran into some hail from cells the developed more or less on top of us. Buckets and buckets of peas at first, blown sideways by what I'd call a very stiff breeze. We found a hotel awning, which turned out to be useless against sideways hail. A couple of poor souls on a Goldwing pulled up in front of us and were promptly blown off of their motorcycle, which almost fell on top of the passenger. They were okay though, and once the hail stopped we helped right their bike, then headed off east on the highway.

We should have waited a bit longer though, as we ran into a fairly heavy shaft of nickle-sized hail. So, we waited that out for a bit, figuring we'd mostly missed that storm, and snapped a few shots while we did:

Rainbow in Minden.

Man, of all the places for a hailstorm!

The now severe-warned storm marches off to the northeast.

Oh, come on, one cheesy shot's allowed! ;)

We west east to near Hastings, then north to I-80 to try to catch up with the tail-end-charlie. Not a lotta luck. We did catch it on I-80, but by then it looked pretty sad. So, we punched into the rain and wind, exited the interstate at Giltner, and watched the sun set:

Good times! Not a lotta great storms, I'm afraid, but in a year like this, you take what convection you can get. Man, I missed the rain!

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Went storm chasin' today with Darren. We didn't see much (if you don't count watching a pair of people on a parked motorcycle get blown over by a big gust of wind in the middle of a hailstorm), but we had a lotta fun, and I snapped a few fun photos that I've haven't had much time to plow through yet. This one's not too bad. Click to enlarge. :)

Friday, September 15, 2006

So, I'm flipping through the September 11th Time magazine in the doctors office (I managed to give my ankle a wicked sprain whilst performing the extremely difficult task of decending stairs), and I come across this sketch of people milling around Ground Zero in August:

Hey, wait a minute, is that...

It's a small world. :)

FWIW, in the sketch I'm taking the picture of the woman that you see posted earlier today. She's not in the sketch, but I'm guessing he cobbled it together from many hours/days of observation. Click to enlarge -- you'll have to, as the blogger thumbnails are too tiny to let you see anything.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

While I'm not a lawyer & neither is this guy, this article is a very handy primer for photographers who wonder where and what it is and isn't legal to take photographs of. It's pretty rare, but on occasion, someone will try to discourage you from taking a photograph by claiming that what you are doing is illegal. Usually, they are in the wrong. Sometimes, they're right -- and it's good to know the difference. :)